Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Deep Wounds

I've been reading about Deep Wounds including tank specs, and decided to give it a try last night. I used this spec. EDIT: TS Posts which inspired me Here.

Patchwerk: I was the cursed middle health tank, whom takes the fewest hatefuls, and therefore has the least rage to play with. Still, I pulled 1730 DPS, 8% of (~32,000) which was Deep Wounds. For comparison, Revenge was 11%, Shield Slam was 22%, Damage Shield was 2%. Deep Wounds was enough to push me over the primary hateful strike tank's DPS, despite taking about only 70% of the damage he took, and getting revenge lit up far less.

Grobbulus: Was MTing him, and Deep Wounds was 9% of my Damage. (slightly more then Revenge).

Gluth: Was kiting Zombies, and it made up a decent amount of damage.

Thaddius: I was just DPSing on everything. Deep Wounds made up 17% of my damage, nearly toping Shield Slam at 18% !! This put me 1000 DPS higher (2900) then the other protection warrior who was doing the same job, but without deep wounds. I would imagine the big benefit came from getting high stacks of it while charged, then them being able to continue rolling while polarity shift running was going on.

Razuvious, Gothik, 4H, Noth: Nothing Exciting to report.

Summary?

For an ability I didn't have to think about, it had great results. I can't imagine Cruelty providing that kind of results for 3 points. Deep Wounds also proc'ed off of Thunder Clap, adding some non-trivial bleed damage to AoE groups. I was using a fast weapon, Red Sword of Courage - but I may want to try a slower weapon (Broken Promice) and see if the increased Deep Wounds damage outpaces the reduced number of Heroic Strikes (and if it does, if the reduced rage consumption / increased rage availability is worth it)

What did I give up to go 18 points in Arms? The biggest cut was a point out of improved revenge. Losing Puncture and Imp. Shield Reflect didn't hurt at all, nor did going back to 0/5 Cruelty.

What else did I gain, besides Deep Wounds? Impale, mostly. My crits we're noticeably bigger. I also got an extra 10 rage on Charges and cheaper Heroic Strikes. I could have taken points out of Shield Spec to fund 2/2 Revenge, or some Cruelty if I was feeling really aggressive, but that felt a little too untankish.

Anyway - I think I'll continue to rock this build for a while. I'm happy with its damage/threat output, and I seem to be just as durable as I was before.

Ya, I must admit I was skeptical about it, but after I tried it the results spoke for themselves. I went away from it to try a deep fury build for Piercing Howl and Commanding Presence, but eventually was drawn back to the spec again. It is simply shocking how much damage rolling deep wounds does and with the debuff limit on bosses a non-issue anymore, there's really no reason not to do it.

This does seem like an excellent trade off for Cruelty, Imp Spell reflect, Puncture, and 1 point in imp Revenge, especially for some of the following reasons:

* Dev is not spammed as much anymore and rage for Dev is not that much of an issue, except on openers.

* I have yet to really see Imp Spell reflect be useful anywhere but some trash/heroics

* Cruelty crit bonus may not generate as much threat/dps as Deep Wounds and Impale

* HS relies on +Hit, meaning, if you don't have enough hit, a few misses is all it takes to average out the crit bonus you would get overall, in terms of threat/dps (check out our HS damage in the meters

PS. I am also excited to test out my Prot DPS gear using my shield block value set on Thaddius sometime. I am curious to see if my 1600 SBV gear (all the plate I have with high Strength, High SBV, 2 piece T7 Bonus, Glyph of Blocking, with 2 trinkets (debating which to use, either SBV or ones of the crit stacking/haste stacking ones) w/o Deep Wounds spec will stack up to anything close to what you were getting.